That said, I personally feel like the mentality of "We will fire you if you aren't doing an _exceptional_ job" reads as a serious red flag. The implication here is that you should expect to work overtime and prioritize your job over all else. Even then, we might still fire you.
Of course I'd rather have a company being open and upfront about their unsustainable expectations, but I'd still prefer a company that values work/live balance of their employees. Would I say that Netflix's approach is toxic? Honestly, yes. But I do understand that this is just my own opinion.
Sustained A-level performance despite minimal effort is rewarded
"""
The message seems to be that you don't have to work hard. They seem to say they want lazy employees that have a good work life balance, because they finish work early.
Whether that's toxic or not, that's another question. But I don't think they value overtime at all.
What I've seen happen at other companies that state they value impact over effort, openly discouraging overtime, is that eventually certain individuals will attain higher impact by not recording their overtime, who then pressure others to do the same. No, no one is directly rewarded for overtime, but effectively, yes, undocumented overtime becomes the expectation from your peers. That is toxic.
How do you know if there’s overtime involved? I’ve worked with people who could accomplish as much in two hours as I did in two days. Would it be “toxic” to work in such an environment?
If your colleagues are leveraging substantial undocumented overtime, you're going to find out eventually. If you know someone is in the office 40 hours a week and they submit massive pull requests first thing in the morning, even Monday mornings, for problems you know they hadn't solved or started the night or week before, you should suspect something's up. Sooner or later, if someone's breaking their neck, they will resent team members who aren't putting in the same effort, and they'll slip and admit to the amount of time they're putting in, directly or indirectly.
Granted, it's easier to hide this now when everyone's working from home.
> I’ve worked with people who could accomplish as much in two hours as I did in two days. Would it be “toxic” to work in such an environment?
Why does it matter to you whether your peers are more productive than you because they are smarter than you, or because they work more? Is the former OK, but the latter "toxic"?
It matters because someone has to decide what A- and B-List performance means. And the performance ceiling will shift if people put in 60 hours constantly. They will get more stuff done (assuming all else being equal) and soon your 40 hour A-List performance will have degraded to B level and now you’re either pressured in also doing the unrecorded overtime to get as much stuff done, or you are fired (you’re B-List now since someone is beating your performance by around 33%).
First of all, you can't assume "all else being equal". People are different, and this is especially true for star performers.
If I'm a manager and I notice someone is consistently underperforming (compared to his peers) - it does not matter if the rest of the team is working overtime, or is smarter, or more experienced - I don't care. I will ask the underperformer to step it up (again, don't care if this means working harder, or smarter), and if no improvement after a set period, I will be looking for a replacement. I'm paying top dollar for top performance.
This situation is normal and expected in professional sports. I don't remember hearing about "bad work/life balance", or "being pressured into doing overtime" in conversations about elite athletes' performance. Should we treat elite SWEs differently?
Remember, this is in the context of companies stating they value impact over effort, the sort of places that brag about their work/life balance. If I'm accepting an offer from such an employer and taking this into account during salary negotiations, I will be rightly pissed off to find out the standard is secretly 60-80 hours a week.
If they're open about expectations, assuming I'm at a point in my life where the trade-off makes sense, then if the compensation is good, that's fantastic. Nothing toxic about that. Not that different from some US manufacturing workers getting paid hourly wages, who make the same kind of trade-off all the time, making damn good money for 60 hours of peak performance a week. Sure, they might end up paying for it by ruining their bodies and drop dead from a heart attack or stroke within a year of retirement if they make it that long, but the risks are no secret.
> This situation is normal and expected in professional sports.
Let's google. The NFL seems topical around this time of year.
> The minimum annual salary for a rookie active roster player with a one-year contract is $480,000 . . . A player with three years’ experience would command a salary equal to at least $705,000, while players with seven to nine years on the field must be paid at least $915,000 . . . the average NFL salary was only about $2.7 million in 2017 . . . That’s less than three-quarters of the average $4 million earnings of a major league baseball player and less than half the typical wage of NBA players, who earn about $7.1 million on average.
I take everything back! Let's not treat SWEs any differently. For that kind of money, I will gladly put in 80 hours a week.
This thread is specifically about Netflix work culture, as reflected in the old slide deck. Netflix does not brag about work/life balance, and is open about their expectation. Also, they pay their senior SWEs >500k a year. Not quite the NFL level, but it's also not as competitive (there is a lot more SWEs than pro football players). Not to mention serious health hazards involved in pro football.
> This thread is specifically about Netflix work culture, as reflected in the old slide deck.
This isn't just about Netflix. The over-arching topic is company anti-values. The context has narrowed since then, first to Netflix, then to a specific slide about not measuring people by hours worked, and so on. But for the heck of it, some other quotes from said slide deck:
> We don't measure people by how many hours they work or how much they are in the office
> Actual company values are the behaviors and skills that are valued in fellow employees.
> Honesty Always
> Pro Sports Team Metaphor is Good, but Imperfect
> Internal "cutthroat" or "sink or swim" behavior is rare and not tolerated.
Again, if the expectation for a workplace like that were 60-80 hours a week, and that fact is clearly and openly communicated, fine.
But if you're making those claims while your top performers are the ones putting in undocumented additional hours and pressuring others to do the same, then I insist that is toxic behavior. Yes, even if they don't brag about work/life balance, though I'll consider it even worse if they do.
But if you're making those claims while your top performers are the ones putting in undocumented additional hours and pressuring others to do the same, then I insist that is toxic behavior.
What if your peers actually worked 2 hours a day, and accomplished a lot more than you when you worked 8 hours a day? Would you feel pressured to put in more hours? Would this be toxic?
I believe the question is relevant because you seem to equate delivering results with working long hours, and while the two are usually correlated, it might not be the case when talking about star performers. For example, if my peers are all like Jeff Dean in terms of productivity, I would probably feel inadequate. You could even say I would feel pressured into doing more - not by my peers or even my manager - I'd be pressuring myself. This, to me, does not mean the environment is toxic. And that's why I believe the environment at Netflix is not toxic (assuming no other issues).
I'm trying to understand what you mean by "toxic", that's why I keep asking the question.
But they do value putting the company over yourself (and your real family).
This can probably have very toxic effects, if you are having problems at home for example (sick kids or whatever) and all they allways care about, is your performance right now. So definitely not the place for me - as I would never put a company over my children (and it sounds like this is expected, even though they would likely never phrase it this way), but there are people without family, who have their work as top priority, so this might work out for them.
They've chosen the best possible version of "Sustained A-level performance," that the person is capable of doing that with minimal effort.
There are a handful of people that are capable of producing "Sustained A-level performance" and for them this workplace probably seems ideal.
Even for the engineers that could reach this bar, it's a very high standard to apply constantly. There's another slide that gives a slight allowance for temporary performance issues, but that lack of security is hard for most people.
Slide 34 to be exact says this about Loyalty. "People who have been stars for us, and hit a bad patch, get a near term pass because we think they are likely to become stars for us again."
"A bad patch" is pretty loosely defined, if you burn out achieving something, or are assigned a problem that is particularly difficult, how much leeway do you have?
I don't think it would be an environment I would particularly enjoy, but I think to the original post's point this is a pretty great set of values because it really clearly articulates the trade-offs. If you are a 10x engineer and hate working at $current_company because they care about hard work and that's frustrating because you work smart not hard and you are comfortable with your career being contingent on consistent high performance, then Netflix is the place for you. If you work hard but think this would burn you out, look somewhere else. And that's what values should do, declare the trade-offs and take a firm stance on which things you value.
So your argument would be, as long as the pay is right, toxic culture is allright?
I mean, as long as this is a individual decision, that would be allright with me - but pay does not negate toxic. It only makes it bearable.
But like stated above, I do not say that Netflix culture is toxic, as they are clear about what they expect: top performance above everything else. That this can lead to toxic situations, as we all are not only having good times - should be clear to anyone applying. But I suppose even at netflix they are aware of this and hopefully have plans to deal with temporary burn outs, other than instantly firing those underperformers.
No, the context was Netflix seeking top performance (results) from its employees. Whether this leads to toxic culture is a different question and up for a debate.
My point is a company that offers top compensation can and should demand top performance.
"Whether this leads to toxic culture is a different question and up for a debate"
And here I was thinking this whole thread was about that question ...
"My point is a company that offers top compensation can and should demand top performance. "
Anyway, sure they can. But no company can expect from me, to put the company over my self. A good company has those goals aligned. I get money - and they get performance. Win win. But I will not work to death for them, as then all my money would be worthless.
That is - no for-profit company can expect this from me. A non-profit on the other hand, that has truly utilitarian goals, that really benefit humanity - I might consider putting myself aside. But why should anyone sacrifice himself, so a company makes more money? That doesn't make sense to me. But of course it makes sense, that companies want their employes give everything to them.
no company can expect from me, to put the company over my self
Yes, I agree, they should not have said that. That should have been left implicit. When a certain pay threshold is crossed (e.g. triple the industry average), I would expect them to expect extra from me. This might mean working nights/weekends if that's necessary for me to be "top performer" compared to my peers. Netflix expects you to keep up with their performance standards. They don't care how you do it - by working overtime, or being brilliant and working 2 hours a day, it simply does not matter, just like in professional sports. If, as you said, you get money, they get performance, it's a win win. But if you get money, but they don't get the expected performance, you can't blame it on toxic culture. If your peers are delivering and you're not, then you're toxic, and you should probably look for an easier job with less pay.
I would say that one possibly toxic element to that is that it could mean that Netflix is not a place to grow. Do not expect help improving. Expect the door. That has other knock on effects like possibly hiding struggles, faking results, etc etc.
Does Netflix actually have such a cutthroat culture? I have no idea.
The slides are a bit contradictory. They talk about only keeping top talent but then also mention a major/minor league analogy. So what's the culture, really?
If you've never done it, it's very hard, emotionally, to fire an under-performer. You see someone struggling and you know it's best for your team/company but now you're going to put that person out of a job.
I'm not excusing it, but I can see people putting off firing under-performers just to avoid feeling like shit.
Netflix itself uses the analogy of a high-performing sports team, or at least used to. So this would be like if the LA Rams say they will drop you from the team if you aren't NFL caliber. It's hard to read a straightforwardly high expectation to match the environment and coworkers as toxic.
Now, it is toxic if a mediocre organization tries to fire a particular good performer because they aren't exceptional, when clearly the rest of the organization also isn't exceptional. That is dishonest, delusional, etc.
That said, I personally feel like the mentality of "We will fire you if you aren't doing an _exceptional_ job" reads as a serious red flag. The implication here is that you should expect to work overtime and prioritize your job over all else. Even then, we might still fire you.
Of course I'd rather have a company being open and upfront about their unsustainable expectations, but I'd still prefer a company that values work/live balance of their employees. Would I say that Netflix's approach is toxic? Honestly, yes. But I do understand that this is just my own opinion.